In order to articulate a trilogy that started with the problem of the evil in “Fire walk with me…” and continued with the idea of the double in “Cool Ridicule: ensayos y escenarios para un autorretrato”; Petra inaugurates “Posesión”, a group show that includes work of Vito Acconci, Miguel Calderón, Jose Davila, Jonathan Hernández, Adriana Lara, Pablo Sigg y Lawrence Weiner. The show deals with the problem of possession as a possible building mechanism of the artistic work.

The opening is on Thursday November 27 from 7:00-10:00pm and the event will be open to the public the two following days (November 28 y 29 from 11:00am – 5:00pm).

Tuesday, 25 November 2008

Los Super Elegantes in conversation with Luisa Duarte regarding their participation at the Sao Paulo Bienal

Luisa Duarte: What will you be presenting to the audience at the 28th Bienal de São Paulo?

Martiniano: It will have elements of theater, musicals and film. The main characters are Ivo Mesquita, Gisele Bündchen and the flip- flop manufacturing company Havaianas. We decided on the plot of the play after reading about the controversy behind the curatorial approach for this year’s Bienal and after reading a comment at frieze.com about the fiscal problems the Fundação Bienal de São Paulo is going through. I took bits and pieces of information from various interviews with Ivo and articles written about the curatorial approach and believed that, despite of what real link existed between the financial situation and the absence of physical artworks, two main ideas became really appealing to me: one was the allegation of a major financial crisis and an artist’s suggestion that a major audit be done on the Fundação Bienal de São Paulo. The other idea, which is what we based the plot of our performance on, was that precisely because of this financial crisis the Bienal was forced to draft a manifesto that would act as a justification for “the void” and clear all suspicions of bankruptcy. We used these two facts as the basis for creating our work. The project is still in progress.

Luisa Duarte: The description of the work planned for the 28th Bienal involves at the same time critical content and humor, irreverence of an entertainment nature. In your work, is there this concern about joining these spheres – a live, eloquent, pop communication – without losing sight of a critical, I would say, almost ironic voltage?

Milena: Our idea for the Bienal is to use the situation the institution finds itself in as a landscape for a theme in our play. It is concept specific. We are planning on performing it in Portuguese, which we will have to learn before the end of November; this will be a way to really integrate and become our characters, which are Brazilian. Method acting. Although people tend to jump to irony as a constant in our work we feel that we are simply translating a moment connecting to the things that surround us, there is always a possibility that through our misinterpretations or translated imitations we end up in some sort of comedy, but this is a comment about how we (in general, people) receive information, and finally create strict judgments and defined beliefs, even sometimes inventing realities that are reflective only of ourselves instead of the critical situation we intend to comment on. We are open to all possibilities.

Martiniano: We’ve never been interested in irony as an artistic trope. But we can certainly appreciate the absurdity and humor that often exist as the result of very serious endeavors. I grew up watching sexy comedy skits on Argentinean TV. They were at the same time crass, political and irreverent. The comedians often used the tension created by the disruption that happens when the actor forgets his / her lines, tries to patch up an unintended mishap or is essentially too drunk to act. I like to think of our performances as a whole made out of layers like gestures, moments, a dance step and usually some sort of script: not as pure critique, but more like painting. In terms of criticality, which is an element of our performance, the color of a panel hanging over the stage is no less important than any other aspect of the work.

Saturday, 22 November 2008

e-flux video rental (EVR) is a project by Anton Vidokle and Julieta Aranda, comprising a free video rental, a public screening room, and a film and video archive that is constantly growing. This collection of over 750 works of film and video art has been assembled in collaboration with more than 100 international artists, curators and critics.

In the 1960s and 70s, artists were drawn to working with video in part because it was cheap to use and easily reproduced and distributed. But video art has become increasingly assimilated to the precious-object economy of the art market. EVR is a poetic exploration of alternative processes of circulation and distribution of video art, and it is structured to function like a video rental store, except that it operates for free. VHS tapes can be watched in the space, or, once a viewer fills out a membership form and contract, they can be checked out and taken home.

Orignally presented at a storefront in New York, in 2004, EVR has traveled to venues in Amsterdam, Berlin, Frankfurt, Seoul, Paris, Istanbul, Canary Islands, Austin, Budapest, Boston, Antwerp, Miami and Lyon and Lisbon. The project will then travel to Brazil and Argentina. After these final venues, having outlived the technology that made it possible (VHS video tape players), the project will be permanently archived with the Arab Image Foundation in Beirut and Moderna Galerija in Ljubljana, in 2009.

Every time EVR is installed in a new city, local artists, curators and writers are invited to serve as selectors, choosing artists whose work is added to the collection.

Friday, 21 November 2008

The World Won’t Listen is a karaoke project produced for Smiths fans in Colombia. Whilst karaoke has a fundamentally democratic function, its musical content is conventionally the deplorable, lack-lustre chirp of the mainstream. For ‘The World Won’t Listen’ we have re-recorded the eponymous compilation in its entirety, note for note, in an insane attempt to construct a platform to give voice to the otherwise largely ignored.

As the song says “Now Is Your Chance To Shine.”

(from the original November 2004 La Rebeca press release)

*****

Collins’ practice often elicits a convocation of individuals, and is process-, or better still, event-oriented. el mundo no escuchará is a karaoke project produced in 2004 for fans of The Smiths in Bogotá, Colombia. While karaoke is perceived to have a fundamentally democratic function—offering an opportunity to briefly take the place of your idol—its musical content is conventionally the deplorable, lack-luster chirp of the mainstream. Collins chose to work with The Smiths partly because of the artist’s own generational and geographical proximity to the band—but more importantly because, despite all of the localisms that tie The Smiths to a particular place and a specific historical moment, they have managed to gain a widely international fan base that defies so many of the ways we have come to think about identity politics and cannot be simply dismissed as another incidence of the homogenizing effects of a bland, global pop culture.

Over the course of two and a half months Collins worked with local musicians in Bogotá to re-record, note for note, the 1986 compilation “The World Won’t Listen” in its entirety, while at the same time launching a citywide campaign carried out in bars, universities, music venues and on the radio, soliciting “the shy, the dissatisfied, narcissists, and anyone who’s ever wished they could be someone else for a night” to be filmed singing their favorite Smiths songs and to be treated like a star. Over 60 fans turned out and the three-day filming was concluded with a live music and karaoke event that drew hundreds of people only to be abruptly interrupted (but not halted altogether) by the explosion of one of Bogotá’s main electrical towers that left the city in darkness for over twelve hours.

EXHIBITIONS, PROJECTS AND TEXTS BY PLB

ABOUT ME

"At the end of the fifteenth of his 'Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Mankind' Schiller states a paradox and makes a promise. He declares that ‘Man is only completely human when he plays’, and assures us that this paradox is capable ‘of bearing the whole edifice of the art of the beautiful and of the still more difficult art of living’. We could reformulate this thought as follows: there exists a specific sensory experience—the aesthetic—that holds the promise of both a new world of Art and a new life for individuals and the community. There are different ways of coming to terms with this statement and this promise. You can say that they virtually define the ‘aesthetic illusion’ as a device which merely serves to mask the reality that aesthetic judgement is structured by class domination. In my view that is not the most productive approach..." from
Jacques Rancier, 'The Aesthetic Revolution and its Outcomes', New Left Review 14, April-March 2002

SHORT BIO

Pablo León de la Barra is an exhibition maker, independent curator and researcher. He was born in Mexico City in 1972. León de la Barra has a PhD in History and Theories from the Architectural Association, London. He has curated among other exhibitions ‘To Be Political it Has to Look Nice’ (2003) at apexart and Art in General in New York; ‘PR04 Biennale’ (2004, co-curator) in Puerto Rico; ‘George and Dragon at ICA’ (2005) at the ICA-London; ‘Glory Hole’ (2006) at the Architecture Foundation-London; ‘Sueño de Casa Propia’(2007-2008, in collaboration with Maria Ines Rodriguez) at Centre de Art Contemporaine-Geneve, Casa Encendida-Madrid, Casa del Lago-Mexico City, and Cordoba, Spain; ‘This Is Not America’ at Beta Local in San Juan, Puerto Rico (2009); ‘Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, Yucatan and Elsewhere’, at the CCE in Guatemala (2010); ‘To Know Him Is To Love Him’, Cerith Wyn Evans at Casa Barragan, Mexico City (2010); ‘Incidents of Mirror Travel in Yucatan and Elsewhere’, at Museo Tamayo, Mexico City (2011); 'Bananas is my Business: the Southamerican Way' at Museu Carmen Miranda, Rio de Janeiro (co-curated with Julieta Gonzalez, 2011); 'MicroclimaS' at Kunsthalle Zurich (2012); 'Esquemas para una Oda Tropical', Rio de Janeiro, 2012; 'Marta 'Che' Traba' at Museo La Ene, Buenos Aires (2012); Novo Museo Tropical at Teoretica, San Jose, Costa Rica (2012); Museu Labirinto / Museum of Unlimited Growth, ArtRio, Rio de Janeiro (2012); The Camino Real Arcades, Lima, Peru (2012). PLB has acted as advisor and/or art curator for the following art fairs: Pinta/London (2010-12), Maco/Mexico (2009-1012), Circa/Puerto Rico (2010), La Otra/Bogota (2009), ArteBA/ Buenos Aires (2012), ArtRio/Rio de Janeiro (2011-2013). León de la Barra has written amongst other publications for: Frog/Paris, PinUp/New York, Purple/Paris, Spike/Austria, Tar/Italy, Wallpaper/London, Celeste/Mexico, Tomo/Mexico, Rufino/Mexico, Ramona/Buenos Aires, Metropolis M/Amsterdam, Numero Cero/Puerto Rico. PLB has also written texts for many artists and exhibition catalogues, lectured internationally and participated in many international symposiums where relevant topics to arts, culture and society have been discussed. PLB was co-director of ‘24-7’ an artists-curatorial collective in London from 2002-2005 and artistic director of ‘Blow de la Barra’ in London from 2005-2008. From 2005 to 2012 he was curator of the White Cubicle Gallery in London, a community art space which he also founded. He is also founder of the Novo Museo Tropical, a museum yet to physically exist somewhere in the tropics and curated the First Bienal Tropical in San Juan Puerto Rico (2011). He is also the publisher of Pablo Internacional Editions and editor of his own blog the Centre for the Aesthetic Revolution. He lives and works between London, Mexico City, Los Angeles, Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, San Juan, Bogota, Lima, Athens, Beirut...